Who Are you Hanging Out With?

A former paid “Internet troll” for Clinton speaks out: It was “nasty” and “left a very bad taste” (UPDATED)

UPDATE: As my website partner brought to my attention, and ReverbPress and other sites have reported, there has been no verification of this Reddit post’s accuracy, no such user has come forward as the author of the piece, and the validity of it has been debunked by some sites online. However, in the interest of transparency, I have left this post up with the above disclaimer.

Astroturfing launched by the Clinton camp, on the other hand, IS real and is confirmed – Correct the Record, a Clinton Super PAC entity, has launched to the tune of a million dollars Barrier Breakers 2016, a digital social media pushback movement to combat Bernie Sanders supporters, and on its own website confirms that it “currently combats online political harassment, having already addressed more than 5,000 individuals who have personally attacked Secretary Clinton on Twitter.”

As she peers at the trolling of her paid minions . . . .

I’d like to first admit I am fairly clueless about how Reddit works – the ins and outs, sub-reddits, up-posting – but it’s an intricate system and there’s a lot of good info out there if you can navigate it.

I stumbled on this tonight, and even though, as my husband pointed out, “This is so Clinton’esque,” it still came as a little bit of a shock that the Clinton campaign – yes, the same campaign that’s scolding Bernie Sanders for negativity, the candidate who’s playing the victim card and gender card at every stump stop – has strategically unleashed a bunch of paid trolls (the term has been upgraded by the Clinton camp into “digital media specialists”) to the tune of a cool mil onto social media with instructions to annihilate Bernie Sanders and his supporters, .

“Confessions of a Hillary Shill” was evidently deleted, but as is the wont of all things social media, someone captured it and re-posted it. Here’s the link and here’s the post (emphasis mine):

Good afternoon. As of today, I am officially a former “digital media specialist” (a nice way to say “paid Internet troll”) previously employed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign (through a PR firm). I’m posting here today as a confession of sorts because I can no longer continue to participate in something that has become morally-indigestible for me. (This is a one-time throwaway account, but I’ll stick around for this thread.)

First, my background. I am [redacted] … and first became involved in politics during the 2008 presidential race. I worked as a volunteer for Hillary during the Democratic primary and then for the Democratic Party in the general election. I was not heavily involved in the 2012 election cycle (employment issues – volunteering doesn’t pay the rent), and I wasn’t really planning on getting involved in this cycle until I was contacted by a friend from college around six months ago about working on Hillary’s campaign.

I was skeptical at first (especially after my experience as an unpaid volunteer in 2008), but I eventually came around. The work time and payment was flexible, and I figured that I could bring in a little extra money writing about things I supported anyways. After some consideration, I emailed my resume to the campaign manager he had named, and within a week, I was in play. I don’t want to get bogged down on this subject, but I was involved with PPP (pay per post) on forums and in the comments section of (mostly-liberal) news and blog sites. Spending my time on weekends and evenings, I brought in roughly an extra $100 or so a week, which was a nice cushion for me.

At first, the work was fun and mostly unsupervised. I posted mostly positive things about Hillary and didn’t engage in much negativity. Around the middle of July, however, I received notification that the team would be focusing not on pro-Hillary forum management, but on “mitigation” (the term our team leader used) for a Vermont senator named Bernie Sanders. I’d been out of college for several years and hadn’t heard much about Sanders, and so I decided to do some research to get a feel for him.

To be honest, I was skeptical of what Sanders was saying at the beginning, and didn’t have much of a problem pointing out the reasons why I believed that Hillary was the better candidate. Over a period of two months, I gradually started to find Bernie appealing, even if I still disagreed with him on some issues. By September, I found myself as a closet Bernie supporter, though I still believed that Hillary was the only electable Democratic candidate.

The real problem for me started around the end of September and the beginning of October, when there was a change of direction from the team leader again. Apparently, the higher-ups in the firm caught wind of an impending spending splurge by the Clinton campaign that month and wanted to put up an impressive display. We received very specific instructions about how and what to post, and I was aghast at what I saw. It was a complete change in tone and approach, and it was extremely nasty in character. We changed from advocates to hatchet men, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Just to give you an idea, here are some of the guidelines for our posting in October:

1) Sexism. This was the biggest one we were supposed to push. We had to smear Bernie as misogynistic and out-of-touch with modern sensibilities. He was to be characterized as “an old white male relic that believed women enjoyed being gang raped”. Anyone who tried to object to this characterization would be repeatedly slammed as sexist until they went away or people lost interest.

2) Racism. We were instructed to hammer home how Bernie supporters were all privileged white students that had no idea how the world worked. We had to tout Hillary’s great record with “the blacks” (yes, that’s the actual way it was phrased), and generally use racial identity politics to attack Sanders and bolster Hillary as the only unifying figure.

3) Electability. All of those posts about how Sanders can never win and Hillary is inevitable? Some of those were us, done deliberately in an attempt to demoralize Bernie supporters and convince them to stop campaigning for him. The problem is that this was an outright fabrication and not an accurate assessment of the current political situation. But the truth didn’t matter – we were trying to create a new truth, not to spread the existing truth.

4) Dirty tactics. This is where things got really bad. We were instructed to create narratives of Clinton supporters as being victimized by Sanders supporters, even if they were entirely fabricated. There were different instructions about how to do it, but something like this (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/31/1443064/-Dis-heartened-Hillary-Supporter) is a perfect example. These kind of posts are manufactured to divide and demoralize Sanders supporters, and are entirely artificial in nature. (The same thing happened in 2008, but it wasn’t as noticeable before social media and public attention focused on popular forums like Reddit).

5) Opponent outreach. There are several forums and imageboards where Sanders is not very popular (I think you can imagine which ones those are.) We were instructed to make pro-Sanders troll posts to rile up the user base and then try to goad them into raiding or attacking places like this subreddit. This was probably the only area where we only had mixed success, since that particular subset of the population were more difficult to manipulate than we originally thought.

In any case, the final nail in the coffin for me happened last night. I was on an imageboard trying to rile up the Trump-supporting natives with inflammatory Bernie posting, and the sum of responses I received basically argued that at least Bernie was genuine in his belief, even if they disagreed with his positions, which made him infinitely better than the 100% amoral and power-hungry Hillary.

I had one of those “what are you doing with your life” moments. When even the scum of 4chan think that your candidate is too scummy for their tastes, you need to take a good hard look at your life. Then this morning I read that the National Association of Broadcasters were bankrolling both Clinton and Rubio, and that broke the camel’s back. I emailed my resignation this morning.

I’m going to go all in for Bernie now, because I truly believe that the Democratic Party has lost its way, and that redemption can only come by standing for something right and not by compromising for false promises and fake ideals. I want to apologize to everyone here for my part in this nasty affair, and I hope you will be more aware of attempts to sway you away from supporting the only candidate that can bring us what we need.

What this former Clinton hit-person didn’t mention was how fervently the mainstream media bought into all of the above, and how fervently the Democratic establishment did as well. It’s no coincidence that we saw calls for Bernie to drop out after Super Tuesday; after Arizona; after New York; and the mainstream media and Dem operatives are again scolding Bernie for his “tone,” accusing him of party disloyalty and calling on him to back off his criticism of Clinton because the complete truth of what he says about this horribly flawed, unlikable candidate is frustrating them beyond belief because he’s risking “party unity” in the fall. His “attacks” on her, they say, could weaken her as a candidate in the general election. Memo to Every-Fucking-Body: We, his supporters, are absolutely not conceding she will be the nominee in the general election, and neither is Bernie Sanders. We will fight to the convention; whatever “party unity” they’re trying to convince us exists is only on behalf of their chosen candidate, not our chosen candidate.

When Clinton higher-ups say, in no uncertain terms, “fuck Bernie,” they effectively solidify the resistance of, oh, about 4 million Bernie supporters and registered voters to never vote for Clinton. So note the above, the pay-to-play operatives of the Clinton camp – but remember one thing: Bernie doesn’t have to pay a million dollars to get people on social media to tout his record and defend him from biased attacks. We do it for free – in fact, we pay him. $27.00.

Related

Let’s not forget that it is unprecedented to have a Democratic frontrunner under criminal investigation by the FBI in the middle of a primary season: if news breaks on this front it could shake up the entire race and change normal superdelegate behavior.

BUT…..If Sanders conveniently steps aside,
and then the FBI announces criminal proceedings against HRC?
…..The way will be cleared for Obama to issue a preemptive pardon…..

Maybe that’s what these calls for Sander’s premature withdrawal are really all about.

She IS under criminal investigation. I don’t know whether you’re a liar, or a fool, but its difficult to imagine a third scenario. President Obama has discussed the investigation himself, for crying out loud!

You should write an article about how Hillary’s corruption can bring American unity as opposed to party unity if Hillary steals this election we already have lot of people dedicated to #BernieorBust. We will assemble and March on the DNC followed by Washington on July 28. Her corruption has created a bad taste just in the mouths of many democrats, republicans, and independents. If she steals this you could see people stop letting invisible party lines separating each other exist and we will all unite against a common enemy, because no matter your party affiliation, global elite are against the 99%

#BernieOrBust supporters are now overrunning the CTR facebook page unopposed. I guess the $1M didn’t buy admins, or there’s some kind of agenda at work (#EnemiesList ?) Anyway, just a heads up, it looks like it would be an interesting follow-up story.
#OccupyCorrectTheRecord #OccupyCTR

I had this conversation with my friend last night. He said what are you doing? Cause I was scrutinizing my computer. I was in a conversation about phone banking in Bernie Believers. And I go, “I”m trying to figure out if this is a hillary troll.” He goes ,”What do you mean.” And I say, “Well, Hillarys campaign pays people to infiltrate social media.” He says, “Dang this is getting nasty.” He’s a Bernie supporter by proxy of knowing me 😛 And I said, “Yeah it’s kinda sad that she has to pay people to support her on social media. Bernie has an army that will do it for free.”

Never voting for that witch Clinton. If Bernie doesn’t win we blew are last chance to take our lives back. Clinton or trump is the end of us. Maybe we are too dumb to have a good president. Too many people don’t know how to critical think or are too lazy to even look anything up. The bought out media loves spoon feeding their advertising to us.

First: Bernie 2016 is not a “PAC allied with Bernie Sanders”, it is a principle campaign committee of a candidate. They are totally different kinds of political committees, with different reporting requirements and different contribution limits.

Second: Bernie 2016 was not “hit with violations”. The letter from the FEC is an RFAI – “request for additional information”; which is exactly what it is. The letter is produced by the Reports Analysis Division, which does preliminary reviews of reports and asks questions. This is not even an enforcement matter, and as long as Bernie 2016 takes appropriate action in response, it won’t be.

Third: The preponderance of itemized contributions “$250, $500, $1000 and more” is because only donors with aggregate contributions over $200 are itemized. This is also why Bernie 2016 had $23 mil in unitemized contributions; they fall below the reporting threshold.

Fourth: “Under campaign finance laws, individuals are allowed to contribute a maximum of $2700 per election year” is a nonsensical statement relative to election law. There is no “election year”. For presidential fundraising; there is a 4 year election cycle. Within that cycle, there is a primary election and a general election to which the $2,700 cap is applied separately. So an individual could give a total of $5,400 total to the campaign committee per cycle. A campaign can accept general election campaign funds prior to the general, but when Bernie loses, he will have to refund general election contributions (this is one reason why many failed presidential campaigns have millions in campaign debt).

Inaccuracies of the author aside, the RFAI identifies extremely common issues, and pretty innocuous. Excessive contributions are 1) common among campaigns, 2) almost impossible to prevent with even hundreds of donors to track and 3) easily remedied via refund or reattribution. There is no issue if the Committee takes action within a statutory period of time (30 or 60 days, I forget). My guess is that the Committee already has refunded many of these prior to the RFAI, but the refunds fall into the next reporting period.

If you notice, I didn’t say one way or another if it were true. HOWEVER, given that it’s a fact that the Clinton camp is spending a mil on pushback on social media, it has a more likely probability of being true than not.

Wow, No instead of saying you had to change your mind on an issue to get votes, but you’re actually lying out your bleep…to get them…candidates can say they have “evolved” on an issue…How Hip…How with it…How much bullbleep do they think we can swallow?…I’m up to my ears already…

And who is this so called Clinton Hit Person? Has he/she come forward to show that they even exist? Is there ANY evidence that this is not just another pile of steaming horseshit dished up by the anti Hillary People because nobody is paying me to respond to this crap and you can clearly see who I am so if you want to come after me and slander me go ahead nobody is paying me nothing. Hey don’t get me wrong I like Bernie fine but just think Hillary is better. I just don’t understand why every time I stand up for her I face personal attacks like the kind I would expect from right wing internet trolls, not fellow Democrats. But if you think this BS is helping Bernie keep telling yourself that. Oh and BTW the voters that were purged in Brooklyn and other parts of the City would more than likely have voted similarly to the other voters in those areas which went for Clinton by a margin of 20 points. Unless of course you would like us to believe that Hillary’s evil elves went and interviewed all 120,000 of them before they were purged to make sure the were Bernie supporters.

What’s your proof it’s NOT? You can’t deny the Hillary camp is spending $1 mil for social media pushback against Bernie – hell, they’re bragging about the 5000 Bernie supporters they slayed. So why is THIS hard to believe?

So you obviously have proof that Bernie isn’t doing the same thing.
Also it’s a bit rich for someone that is obviously an internet blogger and submits regularly to on line magazines such as LA Progressive that it’s Hillary that has the internet trolls working for her. Is LA Progressive non profit? It doesn’t really say on their site but then again they are actively selling advertising at 300$ bucks a pop monthly so it’s all good for you guys but god forbid us Hillary supporters would actually try to respond to your tirades. BTW Bernie is going to win the next few states so that should make you feel better after all he does quite well where there is nothing but angry white people that are going to vote republican anyway. When Bernie shows that he can appeal to some Hispanics and African Americans may be he can get a few super delegates to come his way but so far he hasn’t.

Chris, I am always interested in why people like Hillary better than Clinton. Explain how her position on making college education more affordable is better than Bernie’s and as I can’t find a place that explains how she wants to pay for it can you explain that as well? And then maybe you can tell me Bernie’s position and how he is going to pay for it.

Of course, I could go on about how Hillary is a neocon warmonger and Bernie is not, that Hillary is a neoliberal corporate centrist and Bernie is a Keynesian progressive populist, and… well you know the drill. On just about every issue, Bernie’s full background and positions exceed Hillary’s. If you want to believe Hillary’s current positions after her Olympian-grade flip-flops from her real positions, go ahead and vote for that. Real progressives have a conscience and will not for vote for her. Ever.

Steve, I like Bernie and will vote for him if he is the nominee. That’s what we do to make sure a Republican does not win the White House. That would be a worse thing than for Hillary Clinton to be your president.

“I just don’t understand why every time I stand up for her I face personal attacks like the kind I would expect from right wing internet trolls, not fellow Democrats.” Think of it this way. You’re in an apartment building that is on fire. It’s the middle of the night and most of the tenants are asleep. You start running down the hallways, banging on doors to wake people up. Someone opens the door and says, “What the hell is going on?” You reply, “The building is on fire! You need to get out now or you’re going to die!” The person in the doorway stares at you blankly and says, “Do you have any proof that the building is on fire? This building has never caught fire before. I don’t hear any sirens. There’s nothing about it on the news. Why are you yelling at me?” And you say, “Because I’m trying to save your damn LIFE, you fool!” Inside you can see children behind the person in the doorway, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. “Stop it! You’re scaring my kids! Leave us alone!” They slam the door in your face. Meanwhile, smoke is starting to seep through the cracks in the doorway and you can feel the heat rising from below. Imagine how helpless you’d feel. What would you do? That’s what it feels like to be a Bernie supporter in this primary. I had a friend who is a Hillary supporter say to me on Facebook, “I hope we can still be friends after this silly primary is over”. I was like, “SILLY PRIMARY???” Are you kidding me? This is the most important presidential election of our lifetimes! Our planet is choking to death on fossil fuel, our black and brown brothers and sisters are being murdered and locked up by systemic racism, Martin Shkreli is laughing all the way to the bank while sick people are dying because they can’t afford to buy his medicine for $750 a pill, meanwhile, our politicians from coast to coast are too drunk on money and power to do anything about it. So if it seems like we’re a little upset, it’s because we ARE! This is not a “silly primary”. The building is on fire and if we don’t wake up and put it out right now, we’re not going to make it out alive. You can choose to close the door on that reality if you want. But I’m going to keep on banging and sounding the alarm because that’s how important this is.

Nobody is paying me shit! The question is who is paying Julie Driscoll? BTW it looks like Rob is the one that needs to think man! His post is like four times as long as mine. The idea that internet trolls are favoring HRC is the biggest pile of BS I’ve ever seen. It’s quite clear that the trollls are mostly in Bernie’s camp. You know like you and 90% of the people that have responded to Ms Dricolls little tirade here.

Not new practice, This has been a common practice by BOTH parties before the internet. Public records research for scandelous purposes was a job pre-election and many… many marketing students interned doing it… it has always been this way…. it is how dirty politics earned the name.

” Apparently, the higher-ups in the firm caught wind of an impending spending splurge by the Clinton campaign that month and wanted to put up an impressive display. We received very specific instructions about how and what to post, and I was aghast at what I saw. It was a complete change in tone and approach, and it was extremely nasty in character. We changed from advocates to hatchet men, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth.”
Sounds like the PR firm made the decision to do this to line their pockets. Not directly from campaign.

If I may ask, how much are you few Hillary supporters here being paid per hour by her? Are you getting benefits? We love America, we love freedom and democracy and we Love Bernie! We watch and listen carefully and actually PAY BERNIE TO FIGHT FOR US. So before you make many other paid posts on behalf of Hillary, realize we can detect similar wording and writing styles on various sites and I’d like to ask 2 of you here: please don’t muck up our America’s future to get a small income from Hillary. Join us! We’ll get you respectable jobs.
JUST SAY NO TO MONICA’S EX-Boyfriend’s WIFE IN 2016. We need real leadership now. Thank you.

Nothing. You are just condescending and that is what i was saying before. It may be that you Bernie supporters are more passionate about your hate for Hillary than you are for your love of Bernie. If that is the case then i am sorry for you. BTW Monica’s Ex-boyfriend was president when 23 million new private sector jobs were created as well as new innovative technologies like……the internet ,so I guess that must have just been another Clinton conspiracy to allow her evil trolls to help the hegemonic monsters exert their influence. The 500m billion dollar budget surplus which we had when Bill Clinton left the white house was also clearly a mistake since they never wanted to help anybody but themselves.

I’m just mortified that Hillary supporters know nothing at all of her background, her history and support this evil conniving blood-stained creature without that.
America you will get the candidate you well deserve.

I wonder if a wave election which destroys these right wing trolls will shut the bastards up. I’m paying attention to see how they react. They’re nasty nazis. Trump is an appropriate fuher for them. What fun.

Nutcase. Let’s think about it. If anyone is being payed to post here, it is likely the rabid BS followers…the kool-aid drinkers. You might pay attention to the fact that Hillary has more pledged delegates, more popular votes, and will be the Democratic nominee. He would be the person most in need of drumming up the illusion of greater support.

Bernie has done a lot to being attention to important progressive ideas to the party. Nice job Bernie. Now move on over.

1. Every Bernie supporter I know is not rabid, and if we are drinking kool-aid it’s because its awesome.
2. Hillary Clinton only has more DEMOCRATIC popular votes. If primaries were OPEN in all states, Bernie would be beating Hillary because he has more INDEPENDENT voters supporting him. Oh, and guess what – independents now are the largest voter segment in America. So don’t be duped into thinking Hillary would get more popular votes than Bernie in a presidential election.
3. So, no, actually he doesn’t need us to drum up the illusion of support. I can tell by your comment that you don’t really do much research, you probably just listen to corporate media (which favors HRC because of $$$$).
4. “Bernie has done a lot to being attention to important progressive ideas to the party.” – Maybe you should check your grammar before posting because that sentence makes absolutely no sense. What I think you are saying is that Bernie has done a lot to bring important progressive issues to the forefront of the democratic debates and this race. It’s a shame Hillary supporters have their blinders on and can’t see that she has switched most of her positions in order to pander to voters, because if you think that Hillary shares the same personal convictions as Bernie, I honestly pity you.
5. If you haven’t been able to see the corruption of the Clinton machine by now, I have little hope you will. Whether this story is fact or fiction, there is truth behind social media strategy. If you don’t believe that they have people working for the campaign that are using negative tactics online to try and shut down the Bernie campaign then you don’t understand politics.

Progressive ideals? You mean like standing against trickle down economics, corporations rights superseding the rights of the individual, Wall Street over main street, the expansion of war through more US military interventions that enrich those corporations that are involved in the military complex, the removal of a democratically elected leader so that US businesses can benefit? Those are all positions that Hillary stand for.

When someone puts something like this out there anonymously it can only mean that it is fake
If I was this person who allegedly worked for any campaign and was told to do this crap I would save all the evidence I had and go public
If it real there is proof
I am a dem. I am not supporting Hilary unless she gets the nominee but please give me the proof for all I know this is a fox news brain dead trolbot

This is such a load of hooey. I am not employed as a troll by either camp and do support Hillary. Anytime I post anything positive I am attacked, called troll, delusional among other names… I would like to know who paid this person to write this piece of tripe? Because while there are ignorant people on both sides, it is the Sanders supporters who constantly attack Hillary supporters.

In the event Hillary is the nominee (and tragically, I think that issue was decided at the time of the New York state primary), I invite Bernie supporters to support Donald Trump’s general election campaign. Yes, obviously there are many issues with which you disagree with Trump, but is not the same true of Hillary? And at least Trump gives some sort of a damn about the ordinary American people, whereas Hillary only cares about Wall Street, and the military-industrial complex. Hillary says she opposes TPP, but she was one of its principal negotiators, and surely everyone with half a brain knows she’ll change her mind on Inauguration Day. Trump actually does oppose the TPP, and while he’s not as focused on the issue of income inequality as Bernie, he actually wants to enact some policies that are anathema to the Wall Street crowd. He will shake things up. Hillary will just double-down on more wars, and more catering to the multinational corporate gangster class. Frankly, I find it odd that any Bernie supporter would even consider voting for Hillary in the general election, but I know that crossing the blue-to-red line, as it were, can be a very difficult step to take. And most years, I wouldn’t bother suggesting you do it. But this year, it makes sense. Hillary is unambiguously evil, and Trump (while sometimes acting like a bit of a boor, I freely admit), does possess some modicum of Humanity. It should be any easy choice to make.

And let’s be honest – won’t it be positively delightful, to deny that mean, lying, horrible old woman the Presidency? You know you want to! And there’s only one candidate who can beat her in November.

Nice try Kevin but Bernie’s supporters aren’t that stupid. Oh and BTW if you want to save some Manufacturing Jobs Trump style get ready to pay double for everything you buy at Wallmart or anywhere else for that matter. From your tone I’m guessing that you really dig Wallmart.

They all hire digital do gooders. Just so this post isn’t attacked as partisan, I will point to a man serving jailtime in another country who has been hired globally for this kind of stuff. Well worth the read just to get a sense of how deep these guys go. Fake websites, click farmers, astroturfing, phone hacking, etc.

No true believer really wants to know about their own candidate, but they all hire digital gurus who promise to deliver…bernie, cruz, trump, hillary, rubio, all of them.

The article below, is about none of them, so you won’t turn into a pumpkin if you read it. 🙂

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How to Hack an Election

Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time.